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“Orphan Black” recap (3.2): Are You My Mother?

Previously on Orphan Black, Alison decided to run for school trustee in suburbia because she has extricated herself from clone drama and wants more, StacheClone beat up Mrs. S in a desperate search for Professor Duncan’s research, Cosima realized SHE actually had Duncan’s research in secret code form and told Scott, Helen was kidnapped, and the Castor clones were just generally up to no good.

Speaking of which, ScarClone leads a girl back to his apartment, not unlike the way he lured Krystal in the video Delphine showed Sarah. She’s definitely not sober, and therefore not at all creeped out by the way he just quietly stares. He takes her coat and she calls him a gentleman, to which he responds that manners were very important where he grew up. They get down to business, but somewhere in the midst of it, StacheClone sneaks in and tries to join her without her realizing, and things get real creepy real fast.

Across town, Sarah tells Cal that Delphine is in Europe doing Rachel-esque things, but that she promised DYAD was going to stay out of their hair for now. Cal asks if she trusts that, and Sarah isn’t sure she does, but she’s going to try. Sarah wants to call Cosima and see how her sestra is doing, physically and emotionally, but Cal has a surprise for her first. He takes Sarah and Kira to a house complete with a coloring station just for Kira. The little monkey is delighted and Sarah is doing her best to be angry (she hates surprises) but anything that makes Kira happy makes her happy, too.

At the apartment, ScarClone wakes StacheClone up and they tease each other like brothers do. Paul pays them a visit, and neither of the boys look particularly happy to see Major Dierden. ScarClone tells Paul he met Sarah at DYAD, and that she didn’t seem to be much of a prisoner at all, and in fact walked in like she ran the place. Paul shrugs, that’s just Sarah’s gait. Now shut up, we have work to do.

Paul puts a funky piece of technology on ScarClone and gives him a quiz while monitoring his eyeball movements. The quizzes are logic puzzles, not unlike the ones we were given as teasers to this season. I can’t really fathom what exactly they’re testing for; their ability to think rationally? Whatever it is, the brothers are used to the routine, but while ScarClone stays stock-still and gives his responses quickly and clearly, StacheClone is twitchy and glitchy and bad at answering. Paul gives them extraction orders and they wonder if they’re really Paul’s orders or if they came from “Mother.”

At Felix’s loft, Scott gives Cosima another checkup. Scott says Cosima’s bloodwork came back with good numbers again, but he wants to give her an MRI just in case, because he can’t explain WHY the numbers are good. Cosima says that she’s open to other explanations, maybe ones that are a little left of science. Felix scoffs at this but Cosima promises she’s not going to join an ashram or anything, she has just been thinking about higher powers since her brush with death and miraculous recovery. Scott tells her that Dr. Neelan wants to meet with Cosima, but Scott doesn’t trust him. Cosima says they hardly trust anyone these days, but she wants to meet with him anyway.

Before they leave, Felix gives Cosima a new clone phone; smartphones this time, with covers as “blue as the skies of lesbos.” (I adore Felix and his friendship with Cosima so much.)

In suburbia, far from the threat of Castor clones or DYAD doctors, Alison and Donnie have problems of their own. Alison really wants to run for the school trustee position, but Donnie thinks they don’t really have the dough for that right now. He says they might even have to sell the house, and in response Alison asks what they would do with the corpse in the garage like the beautifully passive aggressive gem she is. Donnie gets on board, saying they’re Team Hendrix, and tries to get a fist bump but Alison cannot be bothered. She sees Marci across the soccer fields and puts on her best bitchy smile. You know the one, where your eyes and waving hand suggest friendliness, but your eyes are shooting invisible lasers of hatred and loathing? Yeah, that one.

Our old buddy Ramone comes up to greet Alison, as he hasn’t seen her at his trunk of goodies in a long time. He congratulates her on being clean, and tells him that he’s going out of business; not because he’s doing poorly, but because he’s off to college to definitely become one of the nation’s finest entrepreneurs. Donnie asks who that was, and Alison’s eyes glimmer with mischief and she says THAT, my dear dopey husband, is an opportunity.

In Cal’s new house, Sarah, Cal and Kira play street hockey (INSIDE. LIKE THEIR LIVES AREN’T DANGEROUS ENOUGH AS IT IS) and the three of them laugh and smile and play and I’m sure a grenade is going to get launched through the window because happiness always comes with a price on this show. Luckily, it’s not an explosion that cuts this family playtime short, but a call from Art saying a woman came in to file a charge against two men who assaulted her, and Art says they both look like Prolethean Mark.

Sarah has to know everything, and even though Cal begs her not to go, she knows she has to, because everything she learns about the Castor clones brings her one step closer to finding Helena.

Sarah kisses Cal, thanks him for abandoning lumberjacking to be closer to her and Kira, and takes off.

Meanwhile, Helena is being waterboarded by SoldierClone. They take her vitals and samples immediately after each session. They start to do it again, when the woman who had been watching her in the box comes in and stops them; her first samples had come back, and it revealed Helena is pregnant. The woman sits her up and introduces herself as Dr. Virginia Coady, a villainous name if I’ve ever heard one. And she says she’s happy to meet her.

At Mrs. S’s house, where our friends still insist on hanging out despite everything that has happened there, Mrs. S is wounded and broken, literally and metaphorically. Though her broken ribs concern her less than the thought that she might have lost Sarah and Kira for real this time, and for nothing. She thought she was doing the right thing, she genuinely thought she was trading in a crazy blonde murderer for Sarah and Kira’s safety, and is a bit torn up now that it might not be the case. Felix gives her a clone phone of her very own and says now is her chance to fix things. This is an all hands on deck mission.

At DYAD, Cosima is using her foot to spin Scott around in his swivel seat, despite his protests, because she is the actual cutest. Dr. Neelan comes in and Scott stands up all awkward and formal but Cosima cannot be bothered. She sasses Neelan then, both about trying to steal Sarah’s ovary, and about the fact that ScarClone escaped but no one alerted them. Neelan looks exhausted already. Seeing this, Cosima throws the ball to Scott, saying he has a question. Scott asks Neelan for the original genome, and asks point blank if it was really destroyed or if that was just another Leekie lie. Neelan blames the Duncans, saying that after the military shut down the cloning experiment, Professors Duncan lost the source material, so the original donors are unknown, the information lost to them.

Sarah strolls on up to the police station like she’s never caused trouble a day in her life, promptly giving Art a mini heart attack. Sarah wants to talk to the girl who was attacked by the Castor clones, and phrases it as a question to be polite, but despite Art’s vehement protest, introduces herself as Detective Beth Childs and asks to hear the story again. Turns out the Castor clones have names (which I think they have all along, but it was fun to call them by nicknames for a bit; this is the first time the names stuck out to me). ScarClone is called Rudy and StacheClone is called Seth. So what happened after we left this poor girl was, Rudy got mad when she didn’t want Seth to join them, so they went into her purse, wrote down all her information, stole a lock of her hair, then left. Art says the hair-ripping makes this an assault, but the girl glares at him and points out that since she consented to having sex with Rudy at first, it’s not rape. Which is messed up; the conditions with which she agreed to have sex changed, therefore making previous consent void and requiring new consent. (This will come up again in my Once Upon A Time recap this week, unfortunately/strangely enough.) Even if there was no more sex had AFTER Rudy tried to join, him being there is attempted rape at least, no? Either way, it was all kinds of messed up, and Sarah thanks her for giving them this information.

Art scolds Sarah for these shenanigans, but she is on a mission to find her twin sister, and absolutely nothing is going to stop her.

Art tells Sarah that the two men have the same tattoo, a two-headed horse on their left forearm, and then tells Sarah she doesn’t have to go home but she’s gotta get the hell up out of here.

In the alternate reality that is suburbia, Ramone meets Team Hendrix in the soccer shed. Donnie is as bumbling and awkward as ever, and Alison is cool and collected, the yin to his yang. Alison offers to buy Ramone’s business, from inventory to customer list. They haggle over the price while Donnie twitches, but when it’s all said and done, Alison explains to Donnie that she’s not just making a business investment that will help with their money problems, but it will also give them an automatic voter base. Besides, surely having an ex-pill popper around an infinite amount of drugs will go swimmingly. What could possibly go wrong?

While moving on their extraction orders, Seth starts glitching worse than before, punching windows and freading out. Rudy calls him and says he knows his brother is glitching, but won’t stand by and watch it happen. He breaks into Felix’s loft, our safe space, our clone dance headquarters, our home.

Clone Call time! After hearing about the tattoo, Cosima tells Sarah a little about the myth of Castor, how he was a badass warrior horsemen (she didn’t mention his twin brother Pollux, though). Cal had told them the tattoo was some sort of black ops symbol, and Cosima calls them the perfect ghost soldiers. Sarah asks Cos how all this will help her find Helena (actually calling her Cos, which made my heart happy) and Cosima tells Sarah to just bite the bullet and ask Mrs. S how to get in touch with Paul.

At their military base, the soldiers try to give Helena the logic test Paul gave Rudy and Seth, but between Pupok clicking in her ear and the questions having to do with mangoes, Helena gets sidetracked.

She starts asking about these mangoes and where she might be able to obtain one or 12, when SoldierClone tries to get her to focus. She tells him that she met his brother and that he was ugly, which he flips out about, because if you thought the Leda clones were close after knowing each other for months, the Castor clones have spent their whole lives together, and are fiercely loyal, albeit mildly insane. Pupok scolds Helena, saying if she keeps being rude, no one will offer her mangoes. I love Pupok so much; it’s like having twice the Helena around.

Dr. Coady stops the testing and gives Helena lettuce instead of mangoes, but Helena is just happy to be eating again. She asks Coady if the Mark-faced boys are her babies, and she explains that yes, though she never wanted to be a mother, she was given the responsibility years ago to watch over the Castor clones, and now is like the little old woman who lives in a shoe. Coady tells Helena that Sarah sold her out, that she decided she was expendable, but Helena knows her sestra would never do that to her. Coady looks at this miraculous human being in front of her, only knowing half of what she went through and thinking it astounding, and says she’s determined what makes Helena the way she is.

Sarah, begrudgingly taking Cosima’s advice, goes to see Mrs. S and ask her about Paul. S says Paul went dark, that she couldn’t contact him if she wanted to, which Sarah finds rather convenient. Mrs. S advises her to take Kira away but Sarah is not in the mood for some motherly advice right now, not from her.

Cal is unpacking in his new house when he hears a noise. He strolls out into the street, leaving his door wide open, so when he gets back in, Paul and his gun are waiting for him. Paul frisks Cal for weapons, and upon finding him clean, puts down his own. The two of them have a staring contest so intense I thought they were literally going to pull out rulers and start measuring. Paul says he’s surprised Cal is staying in one place, and asks if Sarah knows that he’s filthy rich, emphasis on the filthy. Channeling Sarah, Cal asks where Helena is, but all Paul has to say on the subject is that Sarah should stand down, for her own good.

Kira and Sarah get back to Felix’s Loft and start getting ready for a sleepover in the fort. Maybe tonight’s the night Kira will point out that there is a canister of frozen embryos dressed like Mrs. Nesbit in there, but when Sarah comes back from drawing her little monkey a bath, Rudy has Kira in his arms, a gun in his hand, and red paint in x’s over his eyes, like Sarah is in Felix’s funeral painting of her, from his Twisted Sister collection.

Kira is crying and Sarah tells her it’s going to be okay.

Rudy asks for the tissue samples of the Castor originals, but Sarah swears she doesn’t have them, doesn’t know anything. She offers to give him the scribbles Duncan left behind, but that’s not what Rudy is after.

Cal comes to the Loft, but can’t get upstairs because Seth blocks his way, pretending to be hustling for money, but Cal sees is tattoo and punches him. Seth starts to glitch more than ever.

Upstairs, Rudy puts red paint of Kira’s face like tears, while Kira squirms and cries. Sarah thinks back to what the woman told her, about Rudy seeming upset for Seth, and asks if Rudy’s so determined, because he’s trying to protect his brother. She knows that feeling all too well. They hear Seth screaming outside, and Sarah asks Rudy if they tampered with the Castor clones, messed with their brains somehow. Leda clones have faulty lungs, Castor clones have faulty brains.

Between the increasing realization that Sarah really doesn’t know anything, plus hearing his brother in agony outside, Rudy lets Kira go. When he sees how much pain Seth is in, glitching and writhing on the ground, Rudy shoots his brother dead, though not without remorse. He takes a notebook out of Seth’s pocket, spares a very confused-looking Cal, and leaves.

Later, at Mrs. S’s, Sarah is helping Kira pack while keeping her as physically close and protected as she possibly can.

Sarah tells Kira to say goodbye to Mrs. S, and makes Felix promise her that she’s doing the right thing. Felix says she is, that she’s a good mum, so Sarah squeezes Kira into a hug and sends her to Iceland to stay with Cal for a while. They say having a child is like living with your heart outside your body, and you can see that it’s exactly how Sarah feels, like she’s sending her actual heart, her reason for living, out the door with a scruffy lumberjack who moonlights as a Tyroshi sellsword. What’s scariest is, while she’s doing this because she’s hoping it’s the best way to keep Kira safe, she can’t be sure. Felix asks what they do now, and Sarah turns to him, her eyes filled with tears, and says that now they find Helena, and they end this war.

Out in the great wide somewhere, little pregnant Prolethean Gracie wakes up alone in a motel room bed. She knocks on the bathroom door, but Mark tells her to go back to sleep. Inside, he whips out a mini blow torch (like the ones all motel rooms have, right next to the bar of soap shaped like a seashell) and burns his tattoo off with a blowtorch. Though, unless it was just a symbolic gesture on his part, I’m not sure what he hopes to accomplish by doing that. He still has that classic Castor look about him. But at least we know Prolethean Mark wasn’t as in the dark about his origins as he let us believe.

What did you think of “Transitory Sacrifices of Crisis”? Did you miss Delphine and her Hair Straightener of Badassery? What do you think is in store for Helena (and Pupok)? Do you think Sarah is doing the right thing? Process with me!

Speaking of processing, here are some of our favorite #clonesbians tweets from this week:

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

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